Greubel Forsey Draws Its Art Piece Opus to a Close With Edition Historique

By

Laurie Kahle

Feb. 22, 2019 2:21 p.m. ET

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Art Piece Edition Historique
Greubel Forsey

By

Laurie Kahle

Feb. 22, 2019 2:21 p.m. ET

Greubel Forsey’s Art Piece Edition Historique draws the boutique brand’s Art Piece oeuvre to a conclusion six years after it unveiled the mind-boggling Art Piece 1, which incorporated a micro-sculpture by contemporary British artist Willard Wigan that could be viewed with a magnifying lens in the side of the case.

The 33-piece limited edition Historique, priced at US$590,000, will kick off with 11 pieces in platinum followed by 22 subsequent versions in other materials. Given that 18 Art Pieces have preceded the Historique, the new model’s numbers will begin at 19. The watch was unveiled at SIHH in Geneva last month.

Stephen Forsey, who established the firm in 2004 with partner Robert Greubel, has long emphasized the importance of horological evolution, with each new movement advancing the brand’s expertise to continually break new ground—both technically and aesthetically. “Each caliber enables us to understand something,” Forsey says, “so there’s always an invisible equation behind each caliber that helps to build our knowhow.”

The Art Piece Edition Historique embodies this ethos, tracing its roots back to the Double Tourbillon 30°, the brand’s debut watch in 2004. The groundbreaking mechanism brought a new dimension to the time-honored tourbillon, which Greubel Forsey had set out to update for the 21st century.

The ingenious movement pairs two tourbillon cages spinning at different speeds on separate axes with the inner cage housing the balance wheel positioned at a 30-degree angle to the outer one. The design heightens precision by averaging out positional errors due to gravity in any position.

Sketch by Stephen Forsey.
Greubel Forsey

In 2006, the duo teamed up with Harry Winston to create the Opus 6, showcasing a double tourbillon dubbed Emotion 30° against a blue background on the left side of the dial. With its uncommon open dial, the piece established the brand’s signature aesthetic codes with multi-level, three-dimensional architecture paired with offset sub-dials and disc time displays.

From Opus 6, Greubel Forsey progressed to the Invention Piece 1, which put the mechanism at center stage. “With that, collectors came back to us and said this is more art,” says Forsey, noting that the feedback led to Art Piece Edition 1. “We had our watchmaker’s art with the Double Tourbillon 30°, and we had this artistic installation with a micro-sculpture by Willard Wigan,” Forsey says.

Working under high-magnification Wigan was known for his sculpted works that were so tiny they could fit on the head of a pin, so it’s not hard to appreciate the kindred spirit between his art and that of a master watchmaker.

“The idea of Art Piece 1 was to have unique pieces, one-offs, bespoke with the collector,” Forsey says. “It was a challenging exercise to work with a contemporary artist and a collector and try to bring them together and be in the middle and manage all that.”

In all, Greubel Forsey created five unique pieces before moving on to the Art Piece 2 with an installation of its own depicting the Double Tourbillon 30° mechanism (or another custom motif) nano-engraved on a miniscule sapphire tablet.

Art Piece Edition Historique
Greubel Forsey

For Art Piece 2 Edition 2, they dispensed with the installation element altogether and let the artistry of the movement speak for itself. “We made it more contemporary, pushed the envelope further,” Forsey says. “We had this notion of a sand glass, of time running out, with the power reserve from 72 to 36 to zero.”

In another playful flourish, the time was seen on demand when you pressed a pusher to open a window that revealed the minutes and hours indicated with red arrows over discs.

In culminating the Art Piece story with this year’s Edition Historique, Greubel Forsey fused elements from its ancestors, particularly the Opus 6 and Invention Piece 1, to create something new while paying tribute to those that came before.

The 44 mm platinum case houses a new movement offering a fresh take on the Double Tourbillon 30°, prominent against a royal blue background. A kinetic sculpture in its own right, the mechanism’s inner tourbillon, inclined at a 30-degree angle, completes one rotation per minute while the outer tourbillon makes a full revolution every four minutes. Consisting of 475 components, the hand-wound movement delivers a 72-hour power reserve with optimal precision ensured by two series-coupled fast-rotating barrels.

While the small seconds dial between 10 and 11 o’clock is positioned on the same level as the tourbillon, the power reserve gauge is elevated on the lower right, evoking the hourglass notion of time slipping away. On yet a higher plane at 2 o’clock, a red triangle tracks the hours while you have the option of displaying the minutes or hiding them using a pusher on the crown.

This unconventional time display is surrounded by an expression of the brand’s core values, more than 1,000 characters, hand-engraved in relief. The case back offers a rear view of the Double Tourbillon 30° and the relief-engraved signatures of Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey.

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